Posts

Researchers at Stanford, Harvard and the Census bureau have recently published a study that takes a broad look at equality of opportunity in the US. The data set they analyzed is enormous. It tracks 20 million people now in their late thirties, evaluating their childhood circumstances across race, class, family structure, neighborhood, school, etc. They evaluate where these individuals ended up, in terms of income, and several other factors (including whether or not they were incarcerated). The results simply eviscerate any argument that there’s a level playing field and equality of opportunity.

In our most recent study, we analyze racial differences in economic opportunity using data on 20 million children and their parents. We show black children have much lower rates of upward mobility and higher rates of downward mobility than white children, leading to black-white income disparities that persist across generations. While Hispanic and black Americans presently have comparable incomes, the incomes of Hispanic Americans are increasing steadily across generations.

The black-white gap in upward mobility is driven entirely by differences in men’s, not women’s, outcomes. Black and white men have very different outcomes even if they grow up in two-parent families with comparable incomes, education, and wealth; live on the same city block; and attend the same school. Black-white gaps are smaller in low-poverty neighborhoods with lower levels of racial bias among whites and a larger fraction of black fathers at home. We conclude that reducing the black-white income gap will require efforts whose impacts cross neighborhood and class lines and increase upward mobility specifically for black men. — www.equality-of-opportunity.org

The study also demonstrates that the American Dream is fading away for most Americans. Barely half of Americans born during the Reagan years ended up with higher incomes than their parents. It most definitely is not “Morning in America”.

​

But the obstacle course is most severe, and reserves the most devastating outcomes, for black men in particular. The New York Times Upshot team has done a deep-dive, complete with some pretty amazing animated graphics to illustrate the data on race.

​

White boys who grow up rich are likely to remain that way. Black boys raised at the top, however, are more likely to become poor than to stay wealthy in their own adult households. […]

The study, based on anonymous earnings and demographic data for virtually all Americans now in their late 30s, debunks a number of other widely held hypotheses about income inequality. Gaps persisted even when black and white boys grew up in families with the same income, similar family structures, similar education levels and even similar levels of accumulated wealth. […]

The authors, including the Stanford economist Raj Chetty and two census researchers, Maggie R. Jones and Sonya R. Porter, tried to identify neighborhoods where poor black boys do well, and as well as whites.

“The problem,” Mr. Chetty said, “is that there are essentially no such neighborhoods in America. — www.nytimes.com/…

This is an extremely useful work because it provides compelling evidence for what many of us have felt for some time.

It also comes on the same day that Elizabeth Warren, Darrick Hamilton, Michael Moore and Bernie Sanders hosted a compelling town hall on Inequality in America:

Today, Trump nominated a person to lead the CIA who ran torture sites and helped order the destruction of videotapes documenting the torture. Gina Haspel was passed over for a promotion in the Obama era, because she ran a CIA black site and destroyed evidence. She remained in place however, ready for a president with fewer qualms about torturing black and brown people. Trump, of course, has clearly said (as president) that he supports torturing people:

Haspel, 61, would become the first woman to lead the CIA if she is confirmed to succeed outgoing director Mike Pompeo, who has been nominated to serve as secretary of state. Haspel’s selection faced immediate opposition from some lawmakers and human rights groups because of her prominent role in one of the agency’s darkest chapters.

Haspel was in charge of one of the CIA’s “black site” prisons where detainees were subjected to waterboarding and other harrowing interrogation measures widely condemned as torture.

When those methods were exposed and their legality came under scrutiny, Haspel was among a group of CIA officials involved in the decision to destroy videotapes of interrogation sessions that left some detainees on the brink of physical collapse. […]

The Justice Department spent several years investigating alleged abuses in the interrogation program and the destruction of the tapes, but no charges were ever filed. — www.washingtonpost.com/…

This is why Gina Haspel can be elevated to CIA Director, because no charges were filed. This is why yet another generation of officers will be taught that war crimes are no big deal.

“Ms. Haspel’s background makes her unsuitable to serve as CIA director,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a statement Tuesday. “Her nomination must include total transparency about this background, which I called for more than a year ago when she was appointed deputy director. If Ms. Haspel seeks to serve at the highest levels of U.S. intelligence, the government can no longer cover up disturbing facts from her past.”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) also expressed skepticism about Haspel, given her background. “Ms. Haspel needs to explain the nature and extent of her involvement in the CIA’s interrogation program during the confirmation process,” he said. […]

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who blocked Haspel’s promotion to acting head of the agency’s clandestine service in 2013 for her involvement in the torture program, refused to make her stance clear on Tuesday. — www.huffingtonpost.com/…

Other senators, including Diane Feinstein who is on the Select Committee on Intelligence, appear to support (or not actively oppose) Haspel’s nomination.

“Nobody is above the law,” then-Senator Obama said in 2008, when asked whether he’d prosecute Bush administration or CIA officials for torture-related offenses. But he said he also worried that investigations could be viewed as a “partisan witch hunt.” Once he took office, the latter view seems to have trumped the former, and Obama quickly decided not to even open cases against either officials who followed Bush administration “rules” on torture or the officials who wrote those rules in the first place. — www.vox.com/…

Perhaps the next time Democrats are in power, we shouldn’t give in to circumspection. Perhaps we should prosecute war criminals, rather than let them run free to torture another day.

India announced Thursday a program to give half a billion citizens free health insurance, a potentially transformative upgrade of the country’s dilapidated public health-care services and a key element of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government’s last budget before national elections next year. […]

Under the plan, the government will cover health-care costs of up to $7,800 for 100 million poor families and spend some $188 million to create “health and wellness” centers, Jaitley announced to loud table-thumping in India’s lower house. Spending on nutrition for tuberculosis patients, cleanliness drives and education will also result in significant improvements in public health, he said. […]

Healthcare in India tends to be mercenary, with hospitals often refusing treatment unless patients produce large sums of cash first. So the poorest Indians often go without care. Within the Indian context, $7,800 is a huge sum, represent 4 years of income on average. A current program covers $500 of costs for poor families. This program would increase that 15 fold.

So this is a welcome development from a decidedly right-wing government which has in general been skeptical of poverty-reduction programs. The health-care program and strong statements in favor of farm-support bills are meant to counter this perception among poorer Indians who do vote in large numbers since elections are run by a non-partisan commission and voter-suppression is rare.

The government’s funding plan is very unclear. Even with India’s extremely young population (which means lower overall need), the cost for such a program will run into the billions. The government has yet to outline how it will fund the proposal, apart from announcing a surtax that is expected to raise $1.7 Billion. A detailed budget is expected next week and should clarify this.

There are also questions about how coverage will work with the mercenary private sector, which often charges inflated prices. Then there’s the fact that India’s poorest citizens are disproportionately Muslim or from “lower” castes who have historically not supported the right-wing BJP. Implementation details will determine whether or not these communities benefit from the program.

It is also important to say this. Trump is not the source of the problem. His party, and his White House are littered with extremist white nationalist. The names are familiar to us by now. Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, John Kelly within the west wing. And there are people like Steve Bannon and the Nazi-sympathizer Sebastian Gorka who were removed from it. Within the broader Republican party, the white nationalist faction is represented by rising stars like Tom Cotton, and old bigots like Steve King and Joe Arpaio.

But let’s set aside the terrible politics and racism of the GOP for a minute. We still have to contend with the fact that the US, regardless of which party is in power, has been a force of ill when it comes to foreign policy, especially if you’re a small, poor, non-white nation. We’ve overthrown democratically elected governments, foisted corporate plunderers, outright colonized and stripped several countries for resources (including kidnapping humans to steal their bodies and labor and enslavement). Trump and much of the GOP have always been a part of this dynamic. Recall, Trump said “we should take their oil”. That was shocking, but not as shocking as the fact that Bush and Cheney actually did it. We have a long history of rapaciousness towards smaller countries and weaker peoples. Nothing exemplifies this terror better than Haiti. Haitians are still, in many ways, paying the price for overthrowing their French slave-masters and becoming the first country in the western hemisphere to emancipate its indigenous and enslaved population. If you don’t know much about this, here’s a good thread:

Haiti was one of the richest colonies in the world. In 1789, Haiti produced 75% of the world’s sugar and was the leading producer of cotton.

You’d have to not realize that Haiti was founded in a revolution against that system, and that European countries and the United States punished them for their temerity by refusing to recognize or trade with them for decades.

If Haiti is a shithole, then they can say that black freedom and sovereignty are bad. They can hold it up as proof that white countries—and what’s whiter than Norway—are better, because white people are better.

I’m deeply disappointed in several first and second-generation immigrants who have chosen to be part of this shitty administration and enable its hateful agenda.

I’m going to pick on the Indian-Americans, because, well they’re my people and it’s the deepest cut. Though of course it is expected. Lots of immigrants are racist. I’ve heard terrible anti-black, racist and even xenophobic (go figure!) comments from immigrants. Some of it stopped after Obama ran and won, to many the Obamas became the face of black America and changed a few minds.

Where does this all this hate and fear of the other come from? Well, right-wing, nationalist shit-heads exist everywhere. The Indian government is run by an extremist Hindu-nationalist, right-wing party that routinely stokes ethnic and religious strife. Not surprisingly, Trump and Modi have a warm relationship based on their anti-Muslim policies and ethno-nationalist politics.

So we should not be surprised that several Indian-Americans would ally with a jingoist, racist, extremist party in the US. But it is still annoying, so I’m going to call these shit-heads out and encourage you to as well.

Dear Raj Shah: When Congress wrote the law authorizing immigration from other countries, Congress was not fighting for other countries. Congress was fighting for America, your immigrant parents and ultimately you. Get it? @RajShah45https://t.co/iPULPoas03

Nikki Haley: Runs interference for the administration at the UN, routinely denigrating countries from the global south. Her parents were also able to immigrate to the US thanks to the 1965 Immigration act, which this administration hates with a vengeance.

Ajit Pai: The FCC chairman is also a second-generation immigrant. His parents moved here in 1971, again, only possible because of the 1965 Immigration act.

So all these shit-heads who are only here because the LBJ administration was able to overcome hundreds of years of violent exploitation and white nationalism to pass Civil Rights bills, are now working for and furthering the agenda of a nakedly white nationalist administration. Dumb and self-destructive does not begin to describe these fools.

I also want to highlight immigrant-activist and Trinidadian-American (of partly Indian heritage) Ravi Ragbir, who has been detained by ICE. Incidentally, call ICE and tell them to release Ravi:

We are devastated to hear that ICE has detained Ravi Ragbir, immigrant rights activist and community leader. Please join us in calling for a stop to his deportation. #IStandWithRavipic.twitter.com/an6NvRhhqH

Finally, I want to end on a note about how we get ourselves and this country out of this mess. And for that, I’m going to turn it over to Ben Jealous to put all this in historical context, and tell you what framing we should consider using.

Americans might look at the starting point of race in America through the prism of Roots or 12 Years a Slave, Jealous says, but he goes back to a 1663 revolt in the Virginia Tidewater community of Gloucester. What made the Gloucester County rebellion unique was that it was not a slave rebellion in a traditional sense—it was an alliance of enslaved Africans and Irish and English indentured servants. The casus belli was an edict that stipulated that their current status (that is, as enslaved or indentured) “shall convey to your children.”

“As Americans from the very beginning, so long as we could hope that our children could be better off than us, we were willing to endure a lot—but the moment that it became clear that we were locked out from the American Dream, we would rebel together,” [Ben] Jealous said.

The New York Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief, David Halbfinger has a lengthy article about how recent Trump administration and Israeli actions have led Palestinians to more seriously consider changing their position to advocate for a single state with equal rights for all. It’s titled: As a 2-State Solution Loses Steam, a 1-State Plan Gains Traction:

The Palestine Liberation Organization has also begun to ask whether that might not be such a bad idea, though it has a radically different view of what that state would look like. — www.nytimes.com/…

The NYT is being rather coy when it says the Israeli view is “radically different”. As the article itself explains later, “radically different” actually means a system of Jim Crow or Apartheid:

“I would never give citizenship to the masses of the Arab population in Judea and Samaria,” said Yoav Kisch, a member of Parliament from Mr. Netanyahu’s party who is advancing one autonomy plan, using the biblical names for the West Bank.

A far bigger problem with the article is that the Jerusalem bureau chief for the New York Times seems to have forgotten Gaza exists. Oh sure, he does manage to insert the Israeli talking point that the West Bank result in “rockets raining down on Ben-Gurion airport”. But apart from that, the 1.8 million Palestinians who live in Gaza have been completely erased. It’s like they don’t exist.

The debate in the NYT about a one-state solution is framed by the Israeli narrative. The Israeli right wants the West Bank and Jerusalem. They figure they can trim the population over time with expulsions, and many dream of slowly forcing Palestinians out of their ancestral homeland to Jordan.

The thing is, if you add the 1.8 million people in Gaza, then you have just about as many Palestinian Muslims and Christians as you have Jewish persons within the country. This is unacceptable to mainstream Israeli parties because they cannot envision a day when they may have to share power with Palestinians. To an American reader, these views should recall the way in which white supremacists in the South fought against the realization of political power by formerly enslaved black populations during reconstruction. Or how settler colonists in the US dispossessed the indigenous population. The arguments and motives of the Israeli right are also comparable to those of white nationalists like Trump, Bannon, Sessions and Miller who want to establish an white ethno-state in the US.

Halbfinger either suffers from Stockholm syndrome, or has completely internalized the view that a single political entity, with equal rights for all, would be an apocalyptic result. He ends the article with a quote that compares a one-state eventuality to driving off a cliff.

Yet, the NYT article seems oblivious to all this. The article claims to describe a shift in Palestinian negotiating positions, from a two-state demand to a realization that one-state with equal rights may be the only feasible option now. Incidentally the original Palestinian proposal was for a single secular state.

The thing is, no one has ever seen a Palestinian proposal that accepts a division of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians have, despite all the international and Israeli pressures to divide them, insisted they are one people. But the NYT simply ignores Gaza. This incidentally, is exactly what the Israeli right desires. And the NYT is happy to oblige them.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government announced that certain Jewish persons are no longer welcome in Israel.

The left-wing organization Jewish Voice for Peace has been placed on a BDS blacklist being compiled by Israel, the Strategic Affairs Ministry confirmed on Saturday, following a report by the Israel Television News Company.

The ministry has been compiling a list of 20 organizations whose members will not be allowed to enter Israel due to their support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. The ministry has refused to name the other organizations that are on the list.
— www.haaretz.com/…

Code Pink is also going to be given the same treatment that many

Members of 20 international organizations that promote a boycott campaign of Israel, many of them affiliated with the BDS movement, will be banned from entering the country, according to a list published Sunday by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs.

The list was created after Israel’s parliament in March approved legislation that would deny entry visas to foreign nationals who publicly back or call for any kind of boycott — economic, cultural or academic — of Israel or its West Bank settlements. […]

Among those featured on the list are six U.S. organizations, including two run by Jewish activists — Jewish Voice for Peace and Code Pink. — www.washingtonpost.com/…

The other U.S. groups on the list are: American Friends Service Committee; American Muslims for Palestine, Code Pink, National Students for Justice in Palestine; and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights.

European groups on the list include BDS France; BDS Italy; War on Want; Friends of Al-Aksa; The European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine; and Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign. The BDS National Committee; BDS Chile; and BDS South Africa also are on the list. — forward.com/…

So, Steve Bannon is finally unwelcome within the Republican party. The President has given Bannon the treatment he reserves only for the worst offenders, claiming he had nothing much to do with the campaign. Next up, I expect to hear that Bannon’s primary task in the White House was pouring coffee.

Though, I of course share your glee at the downfall of an odious man, my relief is tempered by the knowledge of what it took for the Republican party and this White House to break decisively with Bannon.

Steve Bannon supported an accused child molester in the Alabama senate race. After some initial queasiness, national Republicans closed ranks around Bannon to “protect the seat”. Their thirst for power and lucre barely treated a child-molester as a speed-bump.

So what was finally so terrible that the GOP and its donor class have turned away from Bannon? It wasn’t his racism, or his white nationalism, or his advocacy for a child molester.

No, Bannon’s unforgivable sin was failing to demonstrate loyalty to the current power structure of the Republican party. He threatened the party’s agenda and its goal to create a permanent privileged aristocratic class in the US.

For that gravest of sins, Bannon was finally driven out of the GOP tent. This was done in a coordinated fashion, by both Republican politicians and donors who have funded and supported his racist, white supremacist agenda for years.

*whispers* if the Mercers can make or unmake Steve Bannon, maybe Steve Bannon wasn't the problem.

The Mercers, of course, are in the hedge fund business, and it appears they’ve been distancing themselves from Bannon ever since the tax-bill debate started and Bannon came out in favor of higher taxes on the wealthy and revoking the carried interest provision.

In the end, that’s what it’s all about, creating a new aristocracy behind gated estates, and relegating the rest of the country to the status of serfs.

So while we are hopeful to have seen the last of Steve Bannon and his unkempt visage, let’s not forget that the White House and much of the Republican party is still fully stocked with white supremacists and their allies. It starts with Donald Trump, but also includes Jeff Sessions, Steve Miller, John Kelly, and dozens of Republican senators and representatives.

Have you ever wondered what America felt like on the eve of the Great Depression?

I don’t know for certain, but I can guess that we had wealthy heiresses who dabbled in fashion pontificating on politics, based on what they’d learned at society dinners and maybe some tortured conversations with the servant-class surrounding them.

The heiress here is calling the GOPTaxScam a “middle class tax cut”. So does the president and the entire Republican caucus. Isn’t it strange though, that when HuffPo asked 18 Republican house members what the tax rates for the middle class are going to be after the bill is enacted, 17 of them had no idea. Strangely, many of them could rattle off the new tax rate for the top earners and corporations. Could it be that the Republicans have been lying about a “middle class tax cut” and this is in fact a Tax Scam to benefit their donor-owners?

To be clear, we were just looking for seven figures: 10 percent, 12 percent, 22 percent, 24 percent, 32 percent, 35 percent and 37 percent. We were not looking for congressional representatives to display some savant-like ability and provide the income thresholds for each bracket. We just wanted to see if Republicans knew this one simple element of a bill they were rushing into law.

They didn’t.

Among the GOP lawmakers who were shaky on those specifics were members of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, the chairwoman of the House Budget Committee (Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee) and the lead author of the bill in the House (Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady of Texas).

House Republicans told us, time and again, that they were “very familiar” with the details of this legislation. When we suggested they didn’t have much time to read the final legislation after it was released Friday night, they said they had plenty of time. “We’ve had several weeks! I read it on the plane two weeks in a row!” Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) told HuffPost. — www.huffingtonpost.com/…

Guess Brady’s cluelessness shouldn’t come as a surprise since the “lead author” didn’t actually write the bill, that was the job of 6,000 lobbyists on K Street. My uneducated guess is that the “middle-class” doesn’t employ all those lobbyists?

While the Republicans are huddling with thousands of lobbyists for the richest people and corporations in America, something else has been brewing. Income inequality remains at levels not seen since the 1930s.

Just as in the late 20s and early 30s, average Americans were under no misconceptions about the Republican party’s priorities: a compliant workforce paid starvation wages, weak/non-existent unions, and a relentless attack on benefits for the poor and infirm.

Here’s another thing about the 1930s, they involved a great debate on what the role of the state was in ensuring workers had some level of security, in old age, and during their careers. We saw enormous protections for working-class Americans enacted under the New Deal. The Republicans have relentlessly attacked these programs for decades, and they continue that assault, hoping to create a fiscal crisis that allows them to privatize or kill social security, and undermine Medicare/Medicaid.

Medicare and Social Security are NOT ENTITLEMENTS. You earned those every day you worked since that Summer job at 14yrs. old. You EARNED them. They were deducted from your paycheck for the day you need them. Now the GOP wants to steal your money sitting in an account waiting.

The 1930s also saw a series of man-made environmental disasters befall the US in the form of the dust bowl. We are almost certainly beginning to see the impacts of man-made climate change. The 1930s were also part of an enormous shift in the US labor force, from farms to industry. This created new forms of insecurity for workers, unions fought to deliver security to workers. A similar shift is underway today, as traditional jobs covered by worker protections that were hard-fought, are being replaced by contracting work. Incidentally, the GOP Tax Scam creates incentives for workers to work on contracts, a mode of employment corporations find especially lucrative.

So on the eve of the Great Depression, America faced many of the same tensions we do today. They came to a head with the Great Depression. In response, FDR and Democrats were ready with a political platform for the times, highlighting the contrast between the lives and prospects of the rich and poor in America. Americans responded to FDR’s message like a duck takes to water. They made him president by a landslide (472 out of 531 electoral votes). By 1934, Democrats controlled 69 seats in the Senate, to Republicans’ 25. Democrats held 322 seats in the House, to the Republicans 103.

If we can produce the right platform, we can win similar electoral and legislative victories. It sounds fantastical, but prior to 1932, Republicans had controlled the Senate for 32 years out of 38. After 1932, Democrats would control the Senate for 58 of the next 62 years.

So a sea change is possible and we have the conditions to make it happen. Ordinary Americans know they’re getting a raw deal. We know income inequality is at unsustainable levels. We know the Republican Tax Scam is a massive give-away to billionaire heirs and heiresses with scraps left for the middle-class. Scraps that will be more than taken away when Republicans try to gut Social Security and Medicare next year as they’ve already said they will want to do.

The ground is set, if Democrats can deliver a convincing message, as FDR did, massive electoral victories are possible. On that note, the thread below discusses what is going on with polls in individual House races.

Last year in NJ-11 Rodney Frelinghuysen won 58-39. He trails a generic Democrat 49-40 on a poll we did for Patriot Majority December 12-13